THE FRONT BURNER

Apparently, I tried a poisonous mushroom last week. It tasted good, and I'm not dead.

The mushroom is called false morel or "big red," and I would not have sampled it if I hadn't received an e-mail with a picture of a man in Ashland who found a giant morel.

Turns out, the man was John Travlos, a friend. So I called him and asked about finding the 5-pound mushroom.

"It attacked me," he said. "It reached out and grabbed my leg," he said, laughing. Actually, he said, "you have to fool them. You say you're scouting for wild turkeys, and that's when you find the morels." He hadn't been looking for mushrooms that day while he was walking in the woods - John likes to walk in the woods. He and his wife, Jane Ann, camp and cook outdoors. All three of their children - Ben, 12, Kalli, 14, and Jessica, 16 - fish, hunt wild game and scout for mushrooms.

"Kalli is the best mushroom finder," John said. "She likes the false morels best."

Aren't they toxic?

"Well," he said, "they are classified as poisonous by the conservation department, but I've never been sick or known anyone to get sick eating them."

"I like the white ones," said Ben a couple of days later, when he and his dad showed up with a cooler of mushroom fixings.

Ben crushed crackers and beat eggs while his dad sliced into both types of fungi, dipped them in egg and crackers and fried them in butter. After the taste test, I had to admit, I really liked the meaty flavor and texture of the notorious "big red."

I really wanted to eat them again, so I checked with another expert, Jeanne Mihail, professor of plant sciences at the University of Missouri. She tells students in her fungi class, "I understand that people in Missouri and parts of Iowa collect them and eat them, but I wouldn't recommend it."

The problem, she said, is if people hear the mushroom is safe to eat in Missouri, that information could be transferred to other regions of North America where the false morel is poisonous. In "North American field guides they are labeled toxic," she said. The poison is a naturally occurring toxic chemical called monomethyl hydrazine (MMH), which can cause diarrhea, vomiting, severe headaches and even liver failure.

While Mihail hadn't heard of anyone in Missouri suffering ill effects from the mushrooms, "this is a gamble I wouldn't take."

"If people don't eat them, that just leaves more for me," John said when I told him about the words of caution.

John brought home his prized "big red" on Mother's Day and fed 17 people. ("No one got sick," he said.) The family stored the fungus in the refrigerator and was still eating from the mushroom 2½ weeks later. "It was bigger than a 13-by-9-inch cake pan," he said.

John, who grew up in Columbia, has hunted for both kinds of morels since 1977, when a biology teacher at Hickman High "told us that anyone who took him to a morel patch would get an A in the class. I was after the easy A."

Turns out it wasn't so easy. John, who is 48, didn't find his first mushroom until 11 years later.

Every spring, like all the other 'shroom hunters, he heads out into the woods with his eagle-eyed children. It's a little like "going on an Easter egg hunt. Mother Nature hides her jewels."

Reach Marcia Vanderlip at (573) 815-1704 or mvanderlip@tribmail.com.

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